Disposessed viable?

[CaptainNippon]

Hey guys and girls,

I still have a few dwarfs in my plastic crack hoard and I'm thinking about bringing them into shape. 

 

I have a Thane, 10 Long Beards/Hammerers and a Gyrocopter/Bomber still unassembled and I can see myself expanding on that Airforce with one or two more aircraft and a solid block of infantery with a cannon or two thrown in. 

Has anyone experience with disposessed in AoS? How do they fare in comparison to the "new" factions and what would you recommend adding to the army?

 

 

 

 

 

[KhaosZand3r]

I think dwarves are still pretty solid. Haven't gotten to use mine much yet, but the Organ Gun paired with an Engineer can be devastating. Miners are decent for chaff or getting a flank, but that's about it. Have a bomber and a copter but haven't had a chance to really test them. Irondrakes are fantastic at range and can tank in the Combat phase. And the Flame Cannon's damage is fantastic since you only roll to hit.

[Darth Alec]

Viable as in you'll win tournaments? Not if your opponents are going all out. Viable as in you'll have fun, meaningful games and a solid chance against most lists, yes. They're lacking some tools of the trade, but they are far from bad.

[chord]

You can always combine with other factions to great a Grand Alliance army

[Nico]

I think the Longbeards' ability to stack command abilities is interesting if you bring a couple of legacy ones. Tom Of Warhammer a Weekly did a good video with @Mc1gamer about this.

I would see them as a half of a full Order army - perhaps combo them with a Lord Celestant, Retributors and Javelin Spam or a Cauldron and Witch Aelves. As I write this I'm struggling to think of good command abilities for other Order factions that aren't Empire or Sylvaneth. It's one of Order's weak spots.

I would be reluctant to take a traditional pure Dispossessed list as far too many armies can just take out the artillery crews too easily (Hunters, Javelins, Jezzails, Skyborne Slayers spring to mind) you lose hundreds of points instantly. I also dislike artillery Spam.

[CaptainNippon]

1 hour ago, Nico said:

I think the Longbeards' ability to stack command abilities is interesting if you bring a couple of legacy ones. Tom Of Warhammer a Weekly did a good video with @Mc1gamer about this.

I would see them as a half of a full Order army - perhaps combo them with a Lord Celestant, Retributors and Javelin Spam or a Cauldron and Witch Aelves. As I write this I'm struggling to think of good command abilities for other Order factions that aren't Empire or Sylvaneth. It's one of Order's weak spots.

I would be reluctant to take a traditional pure Dispossessed list as far too many armies can just take out the artillery crews too easily (Hunters, Javelins, Jezzails, Skyborne Slayers spring to mind) you lose hundreds of points instantly. I also dislike artillery Spam.

Could you link the video you mentioned? I couldn't find it in their playlist.

 

I agree about the artillery. I don't find it much fun to put all eggs into one basket and I like to be at least somewhat mobile with my force. I'll still have one or two artillery pieces, but they won't be the main focus.  

 

The idea was to go for a solid infantry force with Longbeards as battleline, Hammerers and Irondrakes to dish out the pain, supported by an "Airforce" of 2-3 Bombers/Copters and a single organ gun/cannon. As far as characters go, I was looking to include a Warden King (I love the Belegar model), a Runelord to boost Rend on the Heavy hitters and possibly one or two unforged, because they are just cool.

The Grudgebound Warthrong looks tempting, but in order to use it I'd need to field a lot more units and I'm not sure if I want to invest that much money at this point.

 

2 hours ago, Darth Alec said:

Viable as in you'll win tournaments? Not if your opponents are going all out. Viable as in you'll have fun, meaningful games and a solid chance against most lists, yes. They're lacking some tools of the trade, but they are far from bad.

That sounds just like what I'm looking for.

[Nico]

 

[Bjarni St.]

Dwarves have a pretty deep roster in the Compendium and by and large don't suffer from having their army torn into twelve useless microfactions.

Thorgrim (expensive) gives a 8" +1A aura and armywide Dispossessed reroll wounds vs one enemy unit, Thorek is pretty tasty (and isn't that expensive), Belegar gives +1A for all Dispossessed attacking a target unit within 16", Ungrim gives one Dispossessed unit +1 to hit AND wound in combat.

The Compendium Clan Throng battalion is also much easier to fulfill than the almost unusable one in the GAO book and the named kings all have the Dwarf Lord keyword.

I haven't put them on the table and had a go but Dwarves look like they're able to do a very solid Bloodbound impression. You'll need some reach (flyers, deepstrikers, shooting, etc) to back them up though, given their trademark immobility. With their complete lack of allegiance bonuses however, you're free to pick that up from wherever you want within Order.

[Double Misfire]

20 hours ago, Nico said:

I would be reluctant to take a traditional pure Dispossessed list as far too many armies can just take out the artillery crews too easily (Hunters, Javelins, Jezzails, Skyborne Slayers spring to mind) you lose hundreds of points instantly. I also dislike artillery Spam.

While I can't argue that I'd much rather all the old dwarf and Empire artillery kits had warscrolls that told you to place the warmachine and crew on one big base with a 7 wound profile, there are some nifty tricks you can pull with individual artillery crews and I've kind of come to love them:

-First off, most of the artillery pieces are rather big and dwarfs are rather short, so it's often possible to deploy the crew behind the artillery model and out of line of sight of any long range missile attacks (they're still screwed against anything that doesn't need line of sight like other artillery and spells, but hey-ho). Sometimes I get really lucky and am able to garrison a warmachine in a building in my deployment zone and deploy the crew round the back of it.

-This one works best in matched play: If you're playing an opponent not used to crewed artillery they'll often kill off the crew with very little thought for attacking the warmachine. If they do this at range it means they'll probably forget about the uncrewed warmachine for the rest of the battle, not reciving the victory points for wiping out the warscroll, and/or sometimes leaving an annoying speedbump that they realise much later they have to charge or move around. If the crew's wiped out in melee most people will typically have allocated none of the attacking unit's attacks to the machine, meaning that it's held up in combat for another round; I've let my opponent have a double turn more than a couple of times after seeing artillery get charged by a particularly scary unit or monster, effectively wasting a turn for their linchpin models.

-This one is a little cartoonish and very circumstantial: It's much more common than you think (especially if they get charged by a light/chaff unit of fast models, though I have seen a Soulgrinder fluff all its attacks against warmachine crew) for warmachine crew to partially or wholly survive the first round of combat against an enemy unit. When this happens it's perfectly legal for the crew, as a separate unit to retreat round the side of the warmachine, which can then fire (often into the attacking unit's face) in your shooting phase, not having moved itself. Totally worth it the few times it happens, just to see the look on your opponent's face when you explain it's perfectly legal.

20 hours ago, Nico said:

I think the Longbeards' ability to stack command abilities is interesting if you bring a couple of legacy ones. Tom Of Warhammer a Weekly did a good video with @Mc1gamer about this.

From my experience of playing with Dispossessed, I much prefer stacking multiple Runelords -1 rend ability than various special characters command abilities. At 80 points each Runelords are much cheaper than the named heroes, don't need to be bunched round an either expensive or easy to wipe out unit of longbeards (rendering your army even more immobile/inflexible), can get their buffs in the game much earlier by casting them on ranged units (particularly quarrellers), and have the added bonus of being able to to completely shut down a magic heavy enemy army if you take 4 or so of them.

 

IMO it's kind of a relief that dwarfs don't get anything from allegiance as all my regular opponents are very, very bored of playing against them, and now I'm able to add a griffon and some other Freeguild troops to the force without feeling I'm loosing anything.